This is a problem I have not been able to get to the bottom of. I'm capturing from a vcr using an ati tv wonder card. The picture comes out with a slight but very annoying thin buzzy line of static across the bottom of the screen. When I capture from a dvd using the s video connection the picure is fine. I've tried two different vcr's and different cables. When I capture to my panasonic stand alone dvd recorder the picture is fine as well so I think that rules out problems with the vcr. I've tried capturing with WinDVD and with NeoDVD Plus both give the same result. I'm stumped
A standalone dvd recorder has hardware to adjust the incoming signal from the vcr, before it's written to disk. Your software does not. A vcr tape has a small track to contain the audio. This shows up as the junk at the bottom. You can crop it (during re-encoding) if necessary, or you can purchase hardware that goes between the vcr and your capture card. Called a Time Base Corrector, but they're not cheap. I would suggest that you record your stuff on the standalone, using DVDRW (rewriteables) so you can erase them and reuse them, once you've transferred the content to your computer.
Thanks for the info Jim. That makes sense now. I tried cropping using TMPGEnc but there seemed to be a drop in the overall quality of the cropped version. I just wish that I had bought a stand alone recorder that would take dvd rw disks. The panasonic uses dvd ram and I even went out and bought an LG dvd burner for the computer that supported dvd ram but the formating is different so the disks made on the computer with a dvd ram disk cant be read on the stand alone panasonic and vice versa. I have to say that the quality of the dubs from vhs to dvd made on the panasonic are very nice. It just has very limited menu functions.
Interesting that the Panny disks can't be read on the computer... Try posting another thread about that in the PVR forum. Someone may know the answer.
